(MENAFN- The Peninsula) A technical glitch disrupted trading on the Qatar bourse yesterday, prompting its administration to cancel all transactions executed during the day.
The snag seems to have been major as technicians were busy until at least 9 last night to fix the problem.
No one would, however, say what exactly the glitch, in its trading platform, was, and whether it would be fixed in time for trading to resume this morning.
"It is still uncertain if trading would resume at the Qatar Exchange (QE) today," stock analyst, Basheer Al Kahlout, said in remarks to this newspaper.
Contacted at 9pm, sources at the exchange said it was a technical failure and technicians were still trying to figure out the cause. "They are busy working," a source said. The QE, meanwhile, said in a statement the snag occurred during trading session and consequently required the exchange to cease trading until the problem was fixed.
"Trading then resumed until noon when the QE team discovered that the technical issue had not been resolved, prompting a halt." After consultations with the bourse regulator, Qatar Financial Markets Authority (QFMA), it was decided to cancel all transactions for the day, the QE said.
The decision was taken because the glitch had affected the flow of information and brokers' ability to execute their clients' orders in a sound and correct manner.
"The exchange would like to stress that the incident did not affect shareholders' registers," the QE statement added.
The QE installed a new system of trading known as UTP (universal trading platform) in late 2010, and this isn't the first time that a snag has developed.
This one, though, seems to be a major fault as technical teams have been busy the whole day and until at least 9 last night to fix it with little success. Al Kahlout said those investors trading on the bourse yesterday who had booked huge profits in the initial phase of trading were disappointed when all transactions were cancelled.
Asked to hazard a guess about the cause of technical snag, Al Kahlout said it was difficult to say. There could be several possibilities, he said.
"Sometimes when trading volumes are huge errors can occur," he said. "Or, maybe the snag is to do with overseas online trading system. Sometimes transactions can be so huge and amounts involved can be so big that they trigger suspicion," he said, adding that it was all guesswork and the actual cause of the glitch could only be explained by the exchange administration
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